Wow, I didn't know Rakuten now has international shopping! (For the benefit of anyone reading this, Rakuten is a big (huge) online shopping site, rather like Yahoo! Shopping but much more centralized.) Up till now you had to use a shopping/shipping service like i-TM4U or Tenso. I haven't tried it but looks promising!

since I live in the UK there's very little I can buy from here apart from various international sellers, so the price difference for me is not so high.
I placed an order yesterday for a sakura bento sold there for $15. The same one is sold in J-box for $32. Unfortunately they're ran out of stock.
I am trying to place another order and keeping my fingers crossed!

Thought I would give you all an update. Since I stayed in Denmark currently, japanese bento accessories are hard to find, so I was really thrilled to find out about Rakuten International. Checked out the website and ordered a bento box and 2 moulds, costing 3030 yen in total. They only ship via EMS, so its 1800 yen for postage. Unfortunately for me, I got taxed when the items arrived, coz the sender's not from EU countries. That's another 3600 yen down. =( So in the end, I'm paying 2+times of the original items' cost... sigh.. Definitely need to curb my spending!

I ordered a new bento box from rakuten yesterday. The specific shop is called Sikki. Got charged for tax which I am not sure why (it's only 140 yen in taxes equivalent to 80pence).
The good thing is that they answer pretty straight away every question I make. They're charging 1800 yen in shipping cost because they're using EMS as standard. They said they will ship on the 22 June...The box get personalized with my name ;-) Very tiny box but sooo pretty:http://en.item.rakuten.com/sikki/10000453/sn=sikki:587833&vm=2&f=1&tl=40...

My personalised bento box has arrived!!! It is really gorgeous!
The rankuten shop I ordered from is called sikki. They've been really good at answering questions straight away. I would definitely recommend them.

Hello there, I live in the UK too, and I am thinking of buying things from Rakuten. You said you got charged for tax. Do you mean Japanese tax? or you mean the VAT when the product arrived in the UK? What price was stated on the box? I think if Custom duty and VAT need to be paid, the post office will charge a 4 pounds handling fee as well. Do you know anyone who has experienced this? any way to avoid?

Hello Emma
I've been buying goods via the Rakuten portal (which I found out about here) but I've not used the service that sends goods directly to the UK as I have had too many prior experiences of paying customs charges - which you need to pay on the value of the goods AND the cost of postage... the £4 fee you mention is higher than this now.
(this is different from the 5% Japanese VAT equivalent - the 140yen - that was previously mentioned)

Basically, if something is worth less than £18 (about 2,500yen) you shouldn't need to pay any customs or tax. Earlier this year I bought something for 3,500yen and wound up paying £20.40 in charges!!!

Rakuten is useful as it lets me buy from Japanese vendors using a UK credit/debit card. However, I have the item sent to a relative in Tokyo and he sends it on to me via SAL. This is how I avoid the charges.

As customs/vat/royal mail charges are so high and interception is so regular (between 25% and 50% of goods sent to you from Japan with EMS gets intercepted by Customs in my experience), I'd advise you not to buy anything above the 2,500yen threshold. Also, the vendor should take care not to label anything as being more than 2,500yen.
You have a better chance of goods sent by SAL not getting intercepted, but there's never a guarantee of this, and, anyway, the Rakuten International service doesn't use SAL.

It was an incredibly horrible online shopping experience. Shop here ONLY if you want to get screwed on shipping chargers.

My order is about 54USD, with the total weight of 1288g, according to the Rakuten website, the shipping cost to USA should run approximately 30USD. I figure it seems very reasonable so I placed the order. However, the store (HAZAMA) decided to charge me 91USD without my consent. The store (HAZAMA) did NOT bother sending me any email regarding the charges before they ship out the product. I tried to communicate with them but all I get is "it's too late, oh and yes, we have to charge you the shipment from the factory to our facility and the wrapping cost too" This is way too bizarre. How on the earth this kind of scam still exists? I also tried to communicate with Rakuten website, but all I get is a generic email telling me to talk to the store (HAZAMA) directly. These people are not ready for the international presence.

I would try Tenso.com the next time (if you want to that is)...you do get charged a 10% handling fee but they are a bit more English-savvy. I have to say that I have not had any really bad experiences getting stuff shipped directly from several Rakuten merchants.

One time I did have a problem where the package got lost and they claimed it was because 'no shipments were being received into Switzerland' (wtf) but I complained long and loudly (angrily) enough (albeit in Japanese) that they 1. sent out a replacement package, which did arrive and 2. refunded me the whole amount of my order. And...about 3 weeks later I got the first package too, so I lucked out in the end ^_^ Though now I have about 50 donut shaped Scotch tape dispensers I was going to use for Xmas favors rattling around...

I recently purchased two bentos (a thermal bento and slim 2-tier) from a seller on ebay. My thermal bento was 60 USD with 15 dollars for shipping. The seller had another bento that caught my eye and it was a Thermos brand bento that was the same price and shipping as the thermal one. I decided to google the bento to see if maybe I could find it cheaper since I didn't want to dish out another 75 dollars for a bento.

I found the same bento the Japan version of Amazon.com for only 30 USD. I tried to purchase it but they wouldn't ship the bento to my country. I continued to search for the bento and I found it for even cheaper than Amazon on Rakuten.

I did a bento search on Rakuten and I love the variety of bentos and accessories on there and sometimes its a lot cheaper than the prices on ebay. I don't like that you wont know the shipping price until after you placed the order and they have already charged it to your card. Also with using my debit account I was temporarily charged twice. There was a pre-authorization charge (what they thought the total would be) and then the actual total. That meant two charges were taken out of my balance and the first charge fell off. I didn't have a problem with it but if you don't have enough money in your account for that then that may be a problem.

Other than that any issues I had they answered right away and I received my bento rather quickly. With the price of the bento and shipping I paid around 57 USD but that was still 18 dollars cheaper than if I purchased it from the ebay seller. I would definitely buy from Rakuten again.